Paper on social mixing in Malawi published in Epidemics

Congratulations to MPRU PhD student Deus Thindwa and colleagues on their new publication in Epidemics! In this social mixing survey study carried out between April and July 2021, 1201 people from 378 households in Malawi reported on their physical and non-physical contacts within and beyond their homes. Deus and colleagues used a negative-binomial mixed effects model to estimate determinants of contact behaviour, and created age-stratified contact matrices to analyse interactions between different age groups.

Overall, social mixing in this population is age-assortative - people of the same age groups are more likely to interact with each other than with a person from a different age group - and contact rates are high despite COVID-19 restrictions (median number of contacts = 10). This insight into social mixing in low-income countries may guide more effective public health interventions in limiting the spread of communicable disease. Please find the full report on the publisher's site.